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You need to click on the sitemap in Google WMT and it will inform you of the issue. There are many possible causes ranging from the sitemap link not being accessible to the file not being formatted correctly.

Invalid URL
This is not a valid URL. Please correct it and resubmit.
URL:http://exhibitions/info_22.htmlParent tag:urlTag:locProblem detected on:Aug 4, 2011 1919
Invalid URL
This is not a valid URL. Please correct it and resubmit.
URL:http://irish-myths-and-legends/info_12.htmlParent tag:urlTag:locProblem detected on:Aug 4, 2011
There is about 10 errors like the above, any suggestions?

I'm just wondering how to do go about fixing these? I ses that they are not valid. Also once fixed do you think this will solve the sitmap issue? (like are these 8 not valid pages causing 600+ pages not being indexed) thanks.

For the 8 invalid pages, you need to fix the URLs. Based on your questions I assume you are using some form of sitemap generation software. Apparently it is not configured correctly. You will need to take a look at these pages to determine why the URLs are invalid and/or contact the sitemap software vendor.

With respect to the indexing, submitting a sitemap is no guarantee that the pages will be indexed. You can submit a 1000 page site and have every page indexed, or you can have only a couple hundred pages indexed. There are a variety of factors involved.

Some factors which can affect indexing:

- Is your robots.txt file blocking any of these pages?

- Are any of these pages duplicate content?

- Are any of the pages invalid URLs?

- Are any of these pages canonicalized to other pages?

- Are any of these pages 301'd to other pages?

- How well is your site's navigation working? Sitemaps help Google find island pages and such, but your site will be crawled much better with proper navigation along with both internal and external links.

- How popular is your site and these pages? Pages with good PA are crawled regularly and sites with high DA are crawled more frequently and deeper then other sites.

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